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From: dcs2e@darwin.clas.virginia.edu (David Swanson)
Subject: Re: Scientific Epistomology, or "Social Text" Editors Make Ted
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Date: Mon, 10 Jun 1996 09:57:24 GMT
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In article <pfoley-0906961201360001@news.earthlink.net>
pfoley@earthlink.net (Patrick Foley) writes:

> In article <DsqIsI.Hyp@murdoch.acc.Virginia.EDU>,
> dcs2e@darwin.clas.virginia.edu (David Swanson) wrote:
> 
> > In article <pfoley-0906960449410001@news.earthlink.net>
> > pfoley@earthlink.net (Patrick Foley) writes:
> > 
> > > This is the crux, right?  Your argument is not that we can't pursue the
> > > final theory because we don't know it yet (why we'd be pursuing it, after
> > > all) but that the idea itself is unintelligible.  Unintelligible in a way
> > > that the value of pi isn't, since you'll agree we can pursue the value of
> > > pi, right?
> > > 
> > > Well let's pick any old definition to get the ball rolling.  I'll say: 
> > > "The final theory will be the one that allows us to predict, within the
> > > desired accuracy, the future behaviour of any particle in the universe." 
> > > Whatever.  Now is your complaint that that's unintelligible or that it's
> > > not what you'd call a "final theory"?  And if the latter, then you need to
> > > tell us just what it is you think we can't have.
> > > 
> > > Cheers,
> > > Pat
> > 
> > Whose desired accuracy (I would have thought you'd say "complete
> > accuracy")?  
> 
> This is what I'm saying a final theory is, it can make any prediction you
> want -- "desired accuracy" is a way of saying it can handle any accuracy
> you specify when you set out to make your calculation.  I'm saying we'd
> still make calculations to find out what was going to happen.  What, you
> thought we would just _know_ everything, hold it all in our minds at once,
> "sit upon a perch and sing, to lords and ladies of Byzantium, of things
> past, passing or to come"?  (If I misquote Yeats a little here, it helps
> my case.  :-)
> 
> Now maybe you _did_ think that's what a final theory would be -- tell the truth.
> 
> > Whence the confidence in the eternal usefulness of
> > "particle," "future," and "universe"?
> 
> Under which of my little headings does this go, David, that "final theory"
> is gibberish, or that this is not what you'd call a final theory?  Are you
> going to insist that the final theory be incommensurable with our current
> theories, or not even that but with English?
> 
> Cheers,
> Pat

I just see no reason to suppose that what you are suggesting is
possible.  How could a theory anticipate all questions, much less know
that it could anticipate all questions?  


David

I too am not a bit tamed, I too am untranslatable,
I sound my barbaric yawp over the roofs of the world.
